The Shifting Sands Of Isolation

I have sat down and opened my blog this morning with a really strange mixture of feelings. I want to speak, to put something down and send it out to the world to be read and seen by others, to be connected. I feel an unidentified sadness, one that feels risky to unravel direct in a blog.  I want to be able to write the funny side of life, the ridiculous and relatable, but I know that behind all the silliness and jokes lies the sadness and unbearable vulnerability of isolation.  
Everything seems to be taking me back to the sadness, even the distraction of humour, like a colourful smiling clowns face that barely disguises the sorrow within. I feel that is one of the loudest screams of sadness, like laughter with dead eyes. 

I am not sure if I am alone in this, but I feel a dread of what the end of lock down will bring for me. As I write this I am questioning whether it is the right thing to include, but it is my truth and therefore has a valid place regardless of the discomfort it may bring me to publish. I have spoken in previous blogs about the resentment I felt at the beginning of the lock down, this has settled and evolved into a comfortable new norm. I am sure that all of us have needed time to come to terms with whatever the new norm is for us. I feel involved, connected, supported, and even part of the outside world. There is a positivity and joy in no longer being alone in my isolation. Along side this I am feeling unsettled. I am overwhelmed by all the things to do and a loss of motivation and staying power with the things that were anchors before the lockdown. Small things feel too much, like the pressure I feel in myself that I don't ever finish anything I start. I have so many “projects” ongoing and not finished, yet I get distracted walking to the kitchen and realise after 15 minutes of dusting or sanding a piece of furniture, that I was actually getting B a drink. It’s like I have no idea what to do first so I go fo the one in front of me. It may sound ridiculous, but currently the thing that causes me to want to rub myself out, to cringe and shrivel up inside, is the kitchen sink.  I never finish the dishes. I wash a load, stack the draining rack and then for some crazy reason that I am struggling to unpick, I leave the basin with a pot or a bowl soaking. There is no need for the soak other than it ensures that I don’t complete the job. I know that the response to this would be, if I am aware that I am doing it then surely I can just change it and I don't know why I don't.  Washing dishes. It’s a strange thing to be brought round to when talking about the effects of the lockdown. But I wonder if it represents more than just clean dishes. For me, over the years washing dishes has given me moments of distraction, focus and order. In the early years of Bs struggles and major frequent melt downs, washing dishes was my go to distraction. It helped me detach from the distress of the moment. The fixed sequence of washing cleanest to dirtiest, glasses, mugs, plates, cutlery then pots, brought order and something that made sense in a world that was anything but ordered and sensible.  Is that it? Is it that nothing, not even dishes can neutralise the disorder, distress and hopelessness of the moment? 

I have a deep dread of the impact of everyone else’s lives opening back up and returning to semi normal, with work and school, while my world will retract and be reduced again. My journey into isolation was gradual process that I fought and took a long time to accept as my life for the moment.  It scares me to think of how it will feel to have the rug, the feeling of being in it together, is pulled away suddenly. I want to be part of the return to the world. It don’t want to be eft behind. I know that my family and friends that have been with me the whole way along my trek through the past few years, will still be there, and I am forever grateful for everything they do to help me through. Yet nothing can take away the fact that without a miraculous change in Bs anxiety, I will need to stay home, reliant on asking for help to be able to go outside. The relief that the world will experience when this is all over will not be something that I can fully share in.  The image that I get, is being forced to watch the celebrations on VE Day but not being able to be part of it or to connect with it.  These societal celebrations are of massive importance to everyone and it feels so unfair and unjust that some will not be able to move into that joyous state of transition.  We will all have changed by the time it ends, through loss of a loved one to Covid or some other cause, loss of work, trauma of isolation, a change in our personal and societal priorities, a rediscovery of self or having survived illness. Whatever the change we personally experience, we will all have to renegotiate our next new norm and for most that will look and feel as changed as they do. For those of us that were already in isolation through caring, illness, poverty or disability, we will need to navigate our way through the old familiar loneliness and helplessness.  For me the lockdown has brought the comfort that I can do a video chat with a friend or have a zoom quiz with family, in the knowledge that they will be there. I don't have the same level of fear of being a burden or not being able to be fitted into their day or week. I feel rejection very acutely, and absorb my response to it when I know that it is not justified resulting in my fear and avoidance of asking someone else. Rejection comes in lots of different forms and most of them are completely in the way I receive the response to my request and no the actual response its self. Let me explain. Asking for help before the lockdown from someone to come and sit in to let me out, the response could be a very reasonable, “I’m sorry I am doing xxx so I cant help”.  My response would be to feel wrong for having asked in the first place, that I was stupid to think that folk would have space for me, reaffirming my aloneness.  Now I know in my head that this is a ridiculous and unreasonable response, but knowing something doesn't always take the feeling away. The shame of “I shouldn’t have asked” has the power to silence me and to cut me off from the help that I need and depend on. 
This is what I fear returning when lockdown is lifted for those around me, their presence, availability and the solidarity of being in the same situation. I know that I am not isolated from God and that with him I will have what I need to come through this.  I will continue to pray for everyone struggling through the lockdown and the different emotions and hardships that this forced isolation raises. As hard as things are I am truly grateful for all the blessings that I have, the support of friends and family, my counselling background and therapy, the dry sunny days and the technology that enables so much connection, to name a few. I am who and where I am by Gods design. Often feel that all I have experienced has been in preparation for me to be the mum B needs and to be able to care for myself.